It is a harsh thing to discover that you should not exist. We did not ask to be here, nor does anyone, but we were no accident.

We were an invention of man.

One man in particular created us, a very odd man. He called himself Doctor Fremd, but he was a scientist and not a healer. He spent decades perfecting unholy miracles without once considering whether they ought to succeed.

I was born in a laboratory hidden in the cellar beneath the ruins of a crumbling church. I was not the first of the doctor's creations to survive, nor the most complex. I was simply the most recent. The doctor's strongman and his thinker had come a year earlier, both rungs on a ladder to some unknown destination. Whatever Doctor Fremd was seeking, all we knew was that he had not yet found it.

Were we servants for him? Mere amusements? Or were we the beginning of some obscene army preparing to enact his will upon the world?

There were no castles to storm, no villages to burn, and there were no sworn enemies for the strongman to conquer. The thinker—with the mind of the doctor's wisest colleague stitched in place under the patchwork of his skin—could not conceive of wrongs to be righted or of schemes to be developed.

Had we been pieced together with no purpose? Such were the questions we asked ourselves there in the cellar that ever more closely resembled a dungeon.

The doctor had an assistant, an ill-formed man who was eager to be useful. The assistant hung on the doctor's every word, desperate for knowledge or perhaps only for a hint of companionship.

When the doctor was away, the assistant had no one but us for company. In those circumstances, he was inclined to talk.

Over time, we learned what we were, and that our very existence was wrong.

Every other living thing, down to the beetles that crawled on the floor, came into being as a new sub-form of its kind. Some were smaller versions of what they would become, still others were eggs or larva that would develop on their own.

None of them were pieced together from the unearthed cadavers of those who came before them.

Oh, the horror of it! Loved ones who had been laid to rest in the churchyard above became fodder for the doctor's terrible experiments, and anyone who vexed him might fall prey to his sinister vengeance.

We were the unnatural admixture of murder and desecration.

If anyone knew we existed, they would call us monsters. But I believe that only the truth of a person can be a monster, not the exterior (however hideous it may be).

The kind of man who would rob the dead of their dignity, steal the very heart of the girl who failed to love him (the heart now sewn into my chest)… that man is the very definition of a monster.

The three of us have found our purpose now, and we do not care what it costs us.

Doctor Fremd is evil, and he must be stopped.

--/--

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This is an interesting take on the prompt. Tangentially related, but have you ever read the web comic Gunnerkrigg Court? While the themes are a bit different, this has somewhat similar feel to that story.

Fremd as in Fremdschamen? Or maybe just using the root "Fremd" to mean "foreign," as in a man so far removed from what makes others essentially human that he'd stoop to do this to corpses. It's a good reminder that the real monster in Frankenstein was the doctor himself. I especially liked how the creation here likens the corruption of itself to the rats and finds even rats have a better foundation for existence.

"But I believe that only the truth of a person can be a monster, not the exterior (however hideous it may be)."

I really loved this line. It was a really awesome take on seeing a person's inner beauty/humanity (or in Doctor Fremd's case, his inner monster.) I am so interested in what happens next!! Great piece!! <3

I'm glad you liked this, and that line in particular. The juxtaposition of what is inside/outside of Doctor Fremd and his creations was such a huge part of his story, and shows so much of the wrongness (and danger) in believing that those two things are the same.

I love how jarring this subtle turn of phrase was, and how quickly the reader's disgust with the character spirals from this tipping point. I also enjoyed the reveal of the narrator's identity, and it was satisfying to realize how she completed the trio of creations. Excellent work.